Cultural Dessert

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Elvis Costello in conversation with Nick Hornby

29 October 2015Going to see an author speak about their latest book can often be an underwhelming experience. Some writers turn out to be far less articulate in person than they are in writing. And even though they are speaking to an audience that may have paid a significant amount of money to see them, I've seen authors at book festival events who seem to have done no preparation and given little thought to what they were going to say. There were no such problems at the Royal Festival Hall on Thursday evening where I went to see Elvis Costello in conversation with the novelist Nick Hornby about his memoir 'Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink'. Unlike many authors Elvis is obviously an accomplished performer, very used to commanding a stage. I saw him play the Royal Albert Hall last year (reviewed here in October 2014). He's also a compelling raconteur and Hornby, clearly a genuine long-time fan, needed do little more than gentle prodding with random names and song titles (in the manner of Elvis's Spinning Wheel of Songs) to unleash the stories. Elvis was also meticulously prepared, slickly manipulating his iPad to share audio clips, family photos and videos on the giant screen above the stage. It was fascinating to see film of his father, Ross MacManus, singing with the Joe Loss Orchestra in the 1960s and looking the spitting image of his son. Questions from the audience prompted Elvis to share memories of particular gigs and his experiences of collaborating with Roy Orbison, Burt Bacharach and other legendary artists. One woman's question was simply "will you please play 'Indoor Fireworks' (a beautiful but largely forgotten album track from Elvis's 1986 album 'King of America') when you tour to London next year? After a very entertaining discussion, Elvis ended the evening by performing three songs, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, and rather wonderfully including 'Indoor Fireworks'. I hadn't heard this achingly beautiful song for years: it's a miniature masterpiece which brought a tear to my eye. It was an absolutely brilliant evening and I can't wait to read the book.

Indoor fireworksCan still burn your fingersIndoor fireworksWe swore we were safe as housesThey're not so spectacular, they don't burn up in the skyBut they can dazzle or delightOr bring a tearWhen the smoke gets in your eyes. Elvis Costello.

Friday, October 23, 2015

'Mothers, Daughters, Fathers, Sons – Memories of Childhood'

23 October 2015

On Friday afternoon I was at the Museum of Edinburgh on the Royal Mile to see 'Mothers, Daughters, Fathers, Sons – Memories of Childhood', an intergenerational oral history exhibition that celebrates the heritage of Chinese and South Asian older people and their UK-born family members. This exhibition, by the Minority Ethnic Carers of Older People Project (MECOPP) as part of the Luminate Festival, consists of pairs of interviews with two people from the same family (Mother/Daughter, Father/Son, Grandmother/Granddaughter etc). Written transcripts of the interviews are presented alongside a selection of family photos. These reflections on childhood explore the difficulties of early life in a variety of countries (including India, Pakistan, Vietnam and China) as well as remembering school, family life and first jobs. It is intriguing to spot the areas of overlap between the reminiscences of the older and younger generations. And it is particularly interesting to read about each family's experience of coming to live in Britain. The exhibition also includes beautiful large photographs of objects that have particular significance to the interviewees (and some of the objects themselves are also on display) – often objects that they have mentioned in their interviews. These photographs are also available as free postcards which visitors to the exhibition can take home. The exhibition involves a lot of reading but the investment of time required is well rewarded: it's a fascinating examination of families, childhood and ageing.

Gallery Social: 'Arthur Melville: Adventures in Colour'

23 October 2015

On Friday morning I was at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh for the dementia-friendly Gallery Social event, part of the Luminate Festival. This was a relaxed and informal guided tour of the 'Arthur Melville: Adventures in Colour' exhibition for anyone affected by dementia, their friends, relatives and supporters. 16 of us gathered in the Clore Education Centre for tea and cake, followed by a chance to try some of the watercolour techniques that the Scottish artist Arthur Melville (1855 – 1904) pioneered. It was fascinating to see the effects that you can create by wetting the paper with a sponge and then adding drops of watercolour paint which spread beautifully through the water. I was quite pleased with my painting but, while the rest of us were producing pretty, abstract shapes, one member of our group had finished a stunning copy of the Arthur Melville painting being used on the poster for the exhibition. Practical participation is a regular feature of the National Galleries Scotland 'Gallery Social' events, and the understanding of technique and medium that you get, even from a short practical session, makes you appreciate the paintings in the exhibition from a much more informed perspective. Our tour of the Arthur Melville exhibition offered fascinating insights into the artist's life, technical skills and subject matter. You always get so much more from looking a painting when an expert points out key features or context to you. The Gallery Social is aimed at carers as much as at those suffering from dementia and our guides never talked down to their audience, providing an enthusiastic, informed, amusing and intellectual commentary on Arthur Melville and his works. I learned a great deal about watercolours and this fascinating artist.

'Broth' by Donna Rutherford

23 October 2015

Oliver Sacks' grandfather, who died at the age of 94, often said that his 80s had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt “not a shrinking but an enlargement of life and perspective” (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-old-age-no-kidding.html?_r=0). For Donna Rutherford's show 'Broth', which I saw at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow on Thursday evening as part of the Luminate Festival, Donna video-recorded a series of interviews with men and women in their 80s. She started each interview by simply asking people to tell her how their mothers or fathers used to make soup. Edited excerpts from these interviews provided the main content of the show, interspersed with music by Inge Thomson and Donna's own reflections on ageing, memories and making soup. And throughout the show Donna is making three pans of soup on the stage in front of us – a traditional vegetable broth, lentil soup and fish soup. As the ingredients begin to bubble the smells drift around the theatre evoking our own memories – and hunger! Donna's text has the beauty of a prose poem, but her delivery is so gentle and conversational it disguises the craft that has gone into the words. At the end of the show the audience is invited to taste the soup: we didn't need to be asked twice. Donna said that the audience in Edinburgh had been shy and needed coaxing out of their seats. When she performed the show in Paisley to more than 200 older people they were rather put out that they only got about a thimble-full each. The time we take to consume our soup provides the opportunity for a post-show discussion in which members of the audience comment on the video interviews and share their own reminiscences of family and soup. It's a very clever way to tackle a wide range of aspects of ageing – and the broth was delicious.

'Senior Moments'

23 October 2015

Scotland Street School in Glasgow is a magnificent building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It is now a museum that tells the story of education in Scotland from 1872 to the late 20th century, complete with recreations of classrooms from different periods in the history of the school. I was there on Thursday afternoon to see 'Senior Moments', an exhibition of portraits and memories from members of Castlemilk Senior Centre – which is on display as part of the Luminate Festival. This small exhibition features 21 pairs of photographs – individual portraits of members of the Castlemilk Senior Centre today, each coupled with a photograph from their past. Each person wrote down their personal reflections on their two pictures and these words are displayed between the photographs. The project was developed by Dr John Lynn from Glasgow Caledonian University. It's fascinating to see the connections between past and present and how the people, and their lives, have changed. The stories the pictures tell are funny, revealing and poignant. It's a very interesting reflection on ageing.

'Descent' by Linda Duncan McLaughlin

23 October 2015

On Thursday I was at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh for 'A Play, A Pie and A Pint', the Traverse's series of lunchtime performances of new plays. As each £12 ticket includes food and drink, the majority of the audience arrive early to eat before the show, creating a great atmosphere in the theatre bar. This week's production was 'Descent' by Linda Duncan McLaughlin, presented in association with Luminate, Scotland's Creative Ageing Festival, which explored the reality of dealing with dementia. Like the 2014 film, 'Still Alice', 'Descent' dealt with the onset of dementia curtailing a successful professional career (in this case as an architect). The heartbreaking experience of a wife trying to care for her ever-more-difficult husband felt very real in the close confines of the Traverse 2 studio theatre. One of the effects of really good drama is to make you forget you are watching a play, and I caught myself gasping out loud a couple of times at the more traumatic moments. Wonderfully acted by Barrie Hunter, Wendy Seager and Fiona MacNeil, it was a harrowing experience which really made you think about the process of ageing – one of the key objectives of the Luminate Festival.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

'The Sisters Brothers' by Patrick deWitt

22 October 2015

The best novels are paradoxically completely original while also drawing on a variety of sources and influences. Canadian author Patrick deWitt's wonderful 2011 novel 'The Sisters Brothers' pulls off this trick brilliantly. 'The Sisters Brothers' is a western, set in the 1850s California Gold Rush. I've just finished reading it as an unabridged audio book, narrated by William Hope. It is a darkly comic, picaresque adventure. Brothers Charlie and Eli Sisters are professional assassins travelling on horseback from Oregon City to San Francisco to take out their latest victim. The book feels like a combination of 'Don Quixote' (reviewed here in January 2012), 'Waiting for Godot (reviewed here in May 2009), 'The Luminaries' (reviewed here in December 2013) and the Coen Brothers film 'O Brother, Where Art Thou' (or pretty much any other Coen Brothers film). Eli narrates the story in a dry, laconic style, perfectly captured by William Hope in the audio version. It's a bleak and brutal tale, containing much violence (to men and to horses) but Eli's weary, matter-of-fact approach to his murderous work is very funny and the writing is excellent.

Dancing at Blackpool Tower Ballroom

22 October 2015

We first started ballroom dancing lessons 24 years ago – so long ago the original 'Come Dancing' was still on the TV! We've made some great friends through dancing as we've enjoyed trying (and failing) to master the full repertoire of ballroom and Latin dances. We've now been taking weekly lessons at Milton Keynes Dance Centre for nearly 10 years. We've never been interested in dancing competitively or taking medals: our dancing is purely social. So there was only one dancing challenge left for us to fulfil – to dance at the Wembley Stadium of ballroom dancing, Blackpool Tower Ballroom. Last weekend we realised this dream with a group of friends from our dance class, travelling to Blackpool for a dance organised by Philip Hurst. The Tower Ballroom is an amazing place: as you enter the room you feel like you are stepping back in time – but into a world that probably only ever existed in Blackpool. The dance floor is enormous and the décor is gloriously over-the-top, with ornate balconies looking down on the dancers. When you learn to dance you work out which steps will take you down one side of the floor before you execute a turn in the corner to take you down the next side. At Blackpool the floor is so big, none of these standard routines seem to fit. Saturday's dance included a demonstration by UK Latin champions, Ryan McShane and Ksenia Zsikhotska. Their performance was fantastic to watch, though this highly choreographed competitive dancing bears little relation to any of the steps we have learned. We had a wonderful time dancing in the Tower Ballroom: it was an incredible experience. And regular readers with particularly long memories will be reassured to know that our foxtrot is still going to be good!

Friday, October 16, 2015

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

16 October 2015

On Thursday we were at Cineworld in Milton Keynes to join audiences in hundreds of cinemas across the world watching the live screening of Sonia Friedman Productions' 'Hamlet' starring Benedict Cumberbatch, live from the Barbican Theatre in London. Benedict Cumberbatch is a great stage actor (we last saw him in Danny Boyle's 'Frankenstein' at the National Theatre, reviewed here in March 2011) and he gave a great performance. But, as many of the reviews of this fastest-ever-selling London theatre show have said, Lyndsey Turner's production is not the greatest 'Hamlet'. Es Devlin's giant set is amazing and there are some wonderful moments but the overall effect felt cluttered and slightly disconnected. Nevertheless 'Hamlet' is a bottomless play and every production seems to discover elements you hadn't noticed before. This version gave a clarity to the background political plot (with Fortinbras taking his Norwegian army through Denmark ostensibly to invade Poland) that I hadn't seen before. And it was great to see Benedict Cumberbatch using the opportunity to speak to a live worldwide audience, at the curtain call, to ask for donations to Save the Children to support refugees from the current crisis in Syria. You can give at: http://savethechildren.org.uk/hamlet.

'War Horse' by Michael Morpurgo, adapted by Nick Stafford

16 October 2015

It was beginning to feel like we were the only people left in the country who hadn't seen the amazingly successful National Theatre production of 'War Horse'. So last Saturday we made our way to the New London Theatre to see what all the fuss was about. Nick Stafford's stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's book, directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, is a very impressive theatrical experience, bringing together a vast cast, original music (by Adrian Sutton), the excellent folk singer Ben Murray (singing songs by John Tams), and stunning design by Rae Smith. Smith's back-projected drawings which represent the sketch book of Captain Nicholls, form a journey through the artistic styles of the early 20th century, becoming harsher and more angular (echoing the Vorticists) as the story moves into the bleakness of the Western Front. But undoubtedly the star attraction is the puppetry, developed by the Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa. Their exoskeleton creations are simple representations of the animals, and the three actors who manipulate each puppet are always clearly visible, but the equine movement is so meticulously observed and recreated that they become totally convincing as horses. 'War Horse' is a moving, tear-jerking experience. It's also one the best examples of the way subsidised theatre has the capacity to develop original, inventive, high-quality productions with the potential to become a substantial commercial hit.

Friday, October 09, 2015

The Stars From The Commitments

9 October 2015

I'm not a big fan of covers bands or tribute acts but I was tempted to see 'The Stars From The Commitments' at The Stables in Wavendon last Sunday because: 1. the line-up still includes two of the original members, and 2. the original band was fictional. Kenneth McCluskey and Dick Massey played members of Dublin soul band, The Commitments, in Alan Parker's 1991 film of Roddy Doyle's novel and, since 1993, have been touring almost continuously with a version of the band. They put on a great show, recreating classic soul numbers with high-quality musicians and three excellent singers (Myles Hyland, Sandra Hyland and Antoinette Dunleavy). It's a party from the start and the packed audience at The Stables had clearly come to enjoy themselves. The show closed with a fantastic performance of 'Try a Little Tenderness'. It really made me want to see the film again.

Thursday, October 01, 2015

Squeeze

1 October 2015

When I saw Squeeze at the WOMAD Festival in 2008 (reviewed here in July 2008) Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook had only just started performing together again after years of barely speaking to each other. Seven years later the band is in rude health, about to launch its first new album since 1998, with its new song 'Happy Days' getting played on national radio and selling out large venues around the country on a tour that started this week. The spark for this late-career success has been the music Squeeze wrote for the Danny Baker TV sitcom, 'Cradle to the Grave', which forms the basis of their new album of the same name. We were lucky to get tickets for their show at Milton Keynes Theatre this week and it was a fantastic performance. The visual presentation was very impressive, with an amazing light show and an inventive series of specially commissioned videos projected across the back of the stage set. But the music would have been wonderful anyway. Difford and Tilbrook are brilliant songwriters with an extensive back catalogue, against which their new songs stood up well. You've got to marvel at writing like 'Up the Junction' which must be the catchiest song without a chorus and features one of the great opening lines: “I never thought it would happen / with me and the girl from Clapham”. When you add to that songwriting ability excellent musicianship and Tilbrook and Gifford's incredible singing voices – both of which are particularly distinctive in very contrasting ways – you get something very special. All of which made a supporting slot by the inimitable John Cooper Clarke and a brief guest appearance on backing vocals by Paul Young (on 'Black Coffee in Bed', reprising his role on the original 1981 recording) mere footnotes. It was great to see Squeeze back at the top of their game – as the T-shirts on sale in the foyer said: “I’d forgotten how much I like Squeeze.”

'Sherlock Holmes' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Gillette

1 October 2015

In 1899 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle collaborated with William Gillette on a stage play featuring his famous detective. 'Sherlock Holmes' is a four-act play that presents an original Holmes story but uses elements from a number of Conan Doyle's books. Gillette's play introduced the famous curved pipe and the phrase "Oh, this is elementary, my dear Watson" (which never appeared in Conan Doyle's stories). The play departs from the convention of having Dr Watson recounting the tale, opening with a scene showing the villains rather than starting with Holmes in his consulting room. The result is more of a thriller than a detective story, as there is no puzzle for the audience to try to unravel before Holmes does. It's not a great play but it was interesting and very enjoyable to see our local amateur theatre company, TADS, perform it in Toddington on Saturday. Debut director Chloe White had put together a fine production. Her use of music and changes of lighting to underpin the dramatic end of some scenes gave the play the feel of a television drama. And she had found an excellent lead actor in Anthony Bird who was a very young but extremely cool and confident Holmes.

About Me

Since September 2005 Robin Simpson has been Chief Executive of Voluntary Arts, which provides a universal voice for approximately 63,000 voluntary arts groups, across the UK and Ireland, involving more than 10 million participants in creative cultural activities. A keen amateur French horn player, Robin is currently a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. Robin is a perennial ballroom dancing student, a frequent theatre-goer, an enthusiastic reader of contemporary fiction, an insatiable consumer of classical and world music and a keen blogger at www.culturalplayingfield.org and www.culturaldessert.blogspot.com